almost successfully

Castorp in the snow

From Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, translated by John Woods:

No, this world with its fathomless silence did not receive a visitor hospitably. He was an invader who came at his own risk, whose presence was only tolerated in an eerie, foreboding way; and he could sense the menace of mute, elemental forces as they rose up around him – not hostile, but simply indifferent and deadly.

What Mann neglects to mention, is, that this solitude can equally be found in the city, for him who knows how to seek it.